When you leave the world of childhood and have embraced the adult world of responsibility, you get to a point when you look back and ask yourself, "When did I slip into this rut; when did the magic become dull and tarnished?" Your experience as an adult may have shown you that the magic did not last for you as it did for Cinderella and her Prince. As an adult, you know that utopia does not really exist outside the borders of Shangri-la.

So where does one, as an adult, find renewal in a time and place where magic is slipping away?

Well like some, you may discover that what you seek can be found through the Dreaming, an internal journey if you like, and that the Map for this journey can be found in the stories of mythology. You may find that mythology holds within its depths the power to re-establish your search for knowledge, re-ignite the fires of your emotions and sharpen the sensitivity of your soul.

Mythological stories embody the essence of the hero who, through a process of strength, trial and true magic, achieves the unrealized hopes and dreams of all mankind. These stories can be an inspirational trigger, challenging our adult concepts of the world and our place within it.

Heinrich Zimmer remarked that myths affect us on a subconscious level. As mentioned earlier, these heroic stories touch our intuitive feelings and our imagination. We remember the details; they soak down and shape the deepest levels of our psyche.

In the character of Methos we find an important counterbalance to the mythological hero. In Methos we find an immortal who tells us that "we're none of us perfect..." Methos could have easily fallen into the typical paradigm of the anti-hero, the villain who allows the hero to shine, the villain who we would automatically disassociate ourselves with, and the villain who we would feel superior to when the hero whacks him.

But Methos isn't like that. Methos confronts us with a new story, a twist to the mythic tale. His is a story in which the anti-hero is not the outright villain but a man who is in hiding from his world and the consequences of who he is and what he has done. Methos is a man who has looked at himself and noticed that the magic is very tarnished indeed.

By following the story of this Machiavellian character we are confronted with some of the more subtle and perhaps unacceptable aspects of who we are. We are told that Methos' raison d'être is survival, that he is rat cunning, that his plans have plans, that over the years he has lost his conscience.

We can sit back and judge Methos with our current social values, but remember mythology doesn't work its magic on this level; mythology seeps down into the depths of our unconscious.

Maybe by watching Methos' tactics when playing the Game, just to stay alive, we can begin to understand that life will always choose life. Maybe by watching Methos manipulate his friends, we learn to look for alternative strategies to our problems. Maybe by watching Methos find his conscience and re-enter his world, we too can learn to forgive ourselves for our occasional failures, and more importantly, forgive ourselves for the fact that we don't measure up to the hero.

If you need proof that Methos the myth has worked its way into our psyche and is exerting an influenced over us, then just listen to some of the comments made by the Methosians. You may just hear comments like, "candygram!" or perhaps, "talk about the blind leading the visually challenged", or maybe even "yes....oh yes" woven into their general conversation.

So for some of us our mythological journey started when we first met Methos; and perhaps for some of us, Methos is making the Map which we are following on our journey through the Dreaming.